Driver Allegedly Threw Poodle at Georgia Deputy

The Moultrie Observer, Ga. On Apr 26, 2013

MOULTRIE, Ga. -- Law enforcement officers are trained to deal with some forms of attacks from belligerent suspects, but that instruction probably doesn't include what to do when faced with a poodle-wielding assailant.

That's what the Colquitt County Sheriff's Office said happened Monday to a deputy responding to an auto accident when the driver launched a poodle at his head and then slugged the distracted officer.

Throwing objects at officers seems to be a theme this week, as a second man is accused of throwing urine at a jailer.

An officer dispatched at 4:14 p.m. Monday to Georgia Highway 37 and David Newton Road found James Anderson Hargraves outside a wrecked Dodge Caravan in the ditch.

Hargraves, 35, had blood around his mouth and on his arm, and Frankie Harper, 37, who was inside the car, had a cut near her nose and blood on her clothes, Colquitt County Sheriff's Office reports said.

Harper told the officer that Hargraves had been drinking and had hit her several times before driving off the roadway.

When the officer walked over to Hargraves to get his side of the story, the reports said, Hargraves threw the poodle at the officer and followed it up by hitting him in the face. Another deputy who was beside Hargraves at the time of the attack jolted him with a Taser, which only agitated Hargraves further.

Those two deputies and a third officer on the scene got Hargraves handcuffed and in the back of a patrol car, reports said. He and Harper were treated at the scene by Emergency Medical Service personnel and Harper was allowed to leave with the poodle.

Hargraves refused to take a breath test for alcohol at the jail.

He was charged with driving under the influence, with his license suspended for failing to take the test; obstruction of an officer; simple battery and failure to drive within a single lane.

In the other incident, Traviskius Sentrell Pate, 30, was charged Tuesday with obstruction of an officer.

Reports said that Pate, a jail inmate, had been making threats all day to throw urine on an officer. When a female officer was near the cell he threw a cup of urine at her, with some of the urine hitting the officer's pants leg, sheriff's reports said.